Catholics who demand Communion on the tongue despite Covid-19 restrictions are selfish, Fr Liam Power from Waterford, Ireland says. They don’t seem to “respect the danger this represented to others.” They are also a cause of “very serious embarrassment for priests, many of whom are elderly,” he says. Although the number of people wanting to Read more
2017 Lay Spirituality: From Traditional to Postmodern may well be regarded as a sequel to Pierre Hegy’s two previous volumes: Wake Up, Lazarus!: On Catholic Renewal (2011) and Wake Up, Lazarus!: Paths to Catholic Renewal (2013). What binds these volumes together and makes them unique is the use of sociological methods to understand church practices Read more
Vatican II and its effect on the Catholic Church is the subject of a new movie. “Novitiate” takes place just before the Second Vatican Council. Read more
Pope Francis has changed Catholic Canon law – and met with some intense reactions. At stake here is the language used for the Mass and the question of who has the responsibility for translating the Catholic liturgy into regional languages. So why should this issue be so very controversial in the 21st century? Early history As a Read more
Fifty years after Vatican II and the Church’s slow moves to solidify, clarify and reaffirm her teaching, Pope Francis wants all the “Pentecostal energy” the Vatican has unleashed to be used, Washington’s Cardinal Donald Wuerl says. Wuerl’s comments were made at the beginning of the ‘Convocation of Catholic Leaders: The Joy of the Gospel’ in Read more
The Reformation’s 500th jubilee is important to Catholics as well as Protestants, says Sr Joyce Ann Zimmerman. Zimmerman is a Sister of the Precious Blood, and a professor of liturgy from Dayton, Ohio. Although the Catholic Church has been involved in a number of divisions over the millennia – including the Protestant Reformation – it Read more
Modern liturgy causes “disaster, devastation and schism”, says Cardinal Robert Sarah. Sarah told the 18th Cologne International Liturgical Conference that rather than bring the liturgy up to date, Vatican II destroyed the Church’s “mystical essence”. In his opinion the church has “abandoned her Christian roots” since the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), where reforms brought the church Read more
The Vatican’s liturgy chief has called on priests to celebrate parts of the Mass facing the east, as this is what Vatican II wanted. The prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Cardinal Robert Sarah, made this call in an interview with a French Catholic magazine. Cardinal Sarah said Read more
The Society of St Pius X might get regular canonical status in the Church without having to recognise certain texts of Vatican II. An internal SSPX memo indicates the traditionalist society could be ready to accept if Pope Francis made an appropriate offer. But that would be conditional on the provision of “an appropriate ecclesial Read more
Pope Francis has opened the Jubilee Year of Mercy by calling for a Church that always puts mercy before judgement. In a Mass at St Peter’s Square on December 8, Francis said the holy year is a gift of grace. “How much wrong we do to God and his grace when we affirm that sins Read more